I’d never watched Wilfred — the home-grown SBS TV comedy series “about a woman, her new boyfriend and her old dog”. I’d heard it was funny but you know how it is. Too many TV show box sets, not enough time.
The Herald Sun decided to do its bit to promote Wilfred at the weekend by reporting that the federal and state taxpayer-funded show featured “bong smoking … profanity, full-frontal nudity and jokes about rape”. Nudity on SBS? Say it ain’t so!
Go-to guy for indignant moral outrage, Family First Senator Steve Fielding, slammed Wilfred because he didn’t “think taxpayers’ money should be used to finance film projects that display acts of bestiality”. What kind of sick and twisted show was this? Now I had to watch it.
I’d missed the first couple of episodes of series 2 that had aired this month but thankfully they’re available to view on SBS’s website. Someone ought to do something about that. There should be a filter or something to stop people watching bestiality online. Except there wasn’t any. Just an actor (Jason Gann) in a dog suit pretending to root — there isn’t much romance in the animal kingdom — a teddy bear during an amusing Aussie comedy about Wilfred (Gann as the titular dog) trying to rid his owner Sarah (Cindy Waddingham) of her boyfriend Adam (Adam Zwar) since he was quite happy before Adam showed up. And that was about it.
Sure, some of the swearing may put wowsers offside but Wilfred is actually less offensive than the turgid and misogynist likes of US comedy import Two And A Half Men. (But hey, who am I to judge — the public gets what the public wants.)
You can catch up on Wilfred online here and watch the third episode of series 2 on SBS tonight at 10pm.
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